Connemara Whispers

My mother's last wish on a bed at Mass General was to go to Ireland.

"You've roamed the workd and never gone to your native land. I want you to go out there after im done and meet a woman like your sisters, cousins, or aunts."

And like that I was obliged to heed my mother's wish, even though its incestuous nature scared the bejus from my marrow. After her passing in 1997 Adrew Camp, an English friend, arranged an autumn rental of a cottage west of Galway from Lord Robert Guinness. A night in Dublin with my landlord at the Shelburne. A morning train ride from Euston Station to Galway. A night of drink in a lively town. Next dawn a bus to Cliften and a taxi to a cow town between the Seven Pins and the Atlantic Ocean. A small town. Not a woman in Ballyconeeley. Just cows and sheep roaming the boglands. My Hawaiian brother and I drank Guinness at Keough's with a handful of sad cow farmers and teenage bartenders. One night Mickie, an old fisherman living in a stone house shaped like an overtunred carrack noticed my looking a bartender. 18, ready to leave town for good.

"Whatcha lookin' at? Sheilaah. This American thinks he might have a shot at you. Whatcha think?"

Sheilaah studied me for a heartbeat with a laugh.

"Not a chance."

"There you go. Back to your beer."

Mikie was right. The old gnome was a first som. He had inherited the family farm, 5e cows, and a bacholer's life, because every woman in Ballyconeeley left the Connemarra, unless they had been knocked up by a teenage boyfriend. Just the way it was. A green county of rain where the wind carried the whispers of Ireland west to drown in the waves of the Atlantic with me wandering the bogs to end uo at Keoghs to drink my drink and sleep in a haunted schoolhouse.

Aah, true Ireland, the Connemarra. 1997___

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Much more to come__

Happy Yulemas 2022

Three years on Yulemas the transplant team of Cornell Weill unexpectedly called to inform me that there was a liver waiting for me at the hospital. Near death from impending liver failure I was overwhelmed by this turn of events. A miracle. A Yulemas miracle. I phoned my lifeguard Francis for a ride and then called my sister. Gina was silent for a few seconds, then said, "I was looking through my desk and a Christmas greeting sticker fell out. From a long time ago."

She read me the message.

Peter Merry Christmas Santa Claus.

It was in my mother's handwriting. My mother had passed from this mortal coil in 1997 and I cried realizing Angleine Nolan Smith's grasp on eternity.

We are always us.

MY mother and me outside 8 McKinly Road Falmouth Foresides Maine - 1953

Happy 74th Father’s Day Poo Frank

My father passed away over fourteen years ago.

Today would have been his sixty-third Father's Day.

Frank A Smith II was my best friend.

Still is.

He loved my mother and mourned her early passing from this life.

My father loved his kids.

All six of us.

Frank III, Regina, Pam, Patrick, Michael, and me.

He was a native of Maine.

And Watchic Pond

I loved that lake too.

It always felt like home.

After my mother passed in 1996, my father and I traveled the world.

We voyaged by car through France.

He came to stay with me later in Ireland and we found my Nana's house.

We went west to Utah.

North to Quebec.

And Poo Frank voyaged around the world to Thailand to meet my family.

Frank A Smith was a good man and while I don't carry his name, I will follow his path around the world.

THE SONGBIRD ON GEORGE'S PIZZERIA

A tale of my mother's voice from 1960s Boston.

Little Italy to be exact.

Love and Peace to Angeline Theresa Smith

Story by Peter Nolan Smith Filmed by Raoul Ollman Set Design, Sound and Lighting by David Henderson YELLOWBIRD by Harry Belafonte

To ssee this video please go to this URL

https://youtu.be/YJJad7MnkJs